Zylo and SAP Concur are Shining a Light on Enterprise Spend Management

For years, Zylo and SAP Concur have enjoyed a strong partnership. Earlier this year, Zylo was recognized with a 2022 SAP Concur Partner Innovation Award. Today, we are excited to be expanding that partnership, and announce that Zylo’s integration for Concur Expense is now available on SAP Concur App Center in the SAP Concur Endorsed Apps category. 

SAP Concur Endorsed Apps are a category of solutions reserved for partners with established customer success or within rapidly growing solution areas and industries. These applications are premium certified by SAP Concur with added security and in-depth testing.

The Current State of SaaS

For businesses everywhere, SaaS has made amazing things possible. According to our 2022 SaaS Management Index, the average organization uses more than 300 SaaS applications to make their business run. But, many of those applications have been acquired through employee credit card purchases or personal expense reimbursement – a practice known as Shadow IT.

On one hand, this puts purchasing power directly into the hands of users – departments, teams and employees – to buy the technology and tools they need to be productive and effective. And many would argue that this increases organizational agility, allowing business units and employees to make faster technology decisions and introduce new innovation into their organization. On the flipside, this continued trend of decentralization does reduce the amount  of IT oversight and governance of SaaS within an organization. And this poses all kinds of risks as unmonitored SaaS growth can lead to inefficient spend, unnecessary costs, and security and compliance risks. 

What’s the Impact on Businesses Like Yours?

Because of the low cost and ease of adoption, any employee with an email and credit card can purchase software. In fact, Zylo data shows about one in five employees purchase SaaS applications via credit cards and expense reimbursement at an average cost of about $600 per SaaS tool.

Organizations reimburse these purchases without understanding if the software is truly needed, if applications are redundant to already implemented tools, or if compliance and privacy goals are met. SaaS applications contain a wealth of business-related data, including personally identifiable information (PII) and intellectual property. Considering the average data breach costs organizations more than $8 million dollars, lack of visibility can pose a significant risk. 

With the rise of remote and hybrid work, we expect business units and individuals to make more purchasing decisions. As the patterns of employee spending change, your software strategy and spend management processes that uphold transparency and compliance must also evolve. 

Why Zylo and SAP Concur are Better Together

The first step in solving these challenges is SaaS discovery. That means uncovering how you’re spending, where you’re spending, and how much you’re spending across the entire organization – whether the applications are sourced by IT, by business units, or by individual employees.

As the enterprise leader in SaaS management and optimization, Zylo identifies and uncovers 100% of SaaS applications within your technology stack. Using a suite of patent-pending matching algorithms, Zylo ingests and analyzes financial transaction data from sources like Concur Expense. The platform then compares and categorizes that data against the Zybrary, our proprietary library comprising nearly 20,000 applications, to uncover 100% of SaaS purchases and continuously monitor your ongoing SaaS spend, usage and adoption.

With the Zylo integration for Concur Expense, organizations can:

• Discover every employee software purchase in the last 12 months
• Continually monitor and set alerts as new software is purchased and discovered by Zylo’s Discovery Engine
• Accurately identify software even when miscategorized in employee expense, travel, or accounts payable
• Pinpoint individual employees or departments with highest software expenses
• Gain insights into duplicate purchases or redundant functionality already available with approved applications
• Create a real-time system of record of all SaaS in the organization
• Power a deep understanding of employee spend patterns and behaviors

We’re honored to partner with leaders like SAP Concur. Together, our joint customers can do more with their SaaS spend.

As the growth of SaaS continues, Zylo’s integration with SAP Concur will be increasingly critical in helping businesses continuously organize, optimize and orchestrate their SaaS investments. To learn more, schedule a demo or view our listing on the SAP Concur App Center.